Elementary students' literacy skills are decreasing nationwide ("The Nation's Report Card," 2019). This is concerning because as literacy skills slip, the literacy demands for American workers are steadily increasing (OECD, 2013). Unfortunately, adding to the situation is the fact that students' attitudes towards reading are worsening…

Investigating factors affecting students' academic performance seems a hard job for researchers on the empirical front. Beliefs, parents' educational background, motivation, and attitudes have been proven significantly influence achievement. However, concurrent research on the relationship among these variables seems scarce. Therefore, to…

Science, Technology and Society (STS) is one of the learning areas that is stated in the Social Studies Course Curriculum. This learning area is included in all the class levels in which the social studies course is taught with the aim of providing various skills to the students. Even in the STS learning area of the fifth grade, it is stated that…

Creativity is an important skill in the 21st century, and design thinking has been proposed as a methodology for fostering creativity. Design creativity involves two non-rational aspects: motivation and empathy. However, little is known about how empathy and motivation work in synergy with creativity. This study explored the underlying mechanisms…

This study aims to compare and analyse the effects of context-based vocabulary activities with technology-assisted tools and printed materials on fourth-grade primary school students' vocabulary knowledge and learning motivation. One of the quasi-experimental designs, the "pretest-posttest control group design", was used in the study.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of cognitive appraisal styles (i.e., threat vs. challenge) and feedback types on feedback acceptance and motivation for challenge. We used four feedback types based on valence (positive vs. negative) and orientation (person vs. task). Sixth-graders completed the cognitive appraisal style…

This qualitative study explored teachers' perceptions of barriers to parental involvement in a Title 1 middle school. The researcher collected data through interviews wherein participants responded to open-ended questions. The data was analyzed using qualitative content analysis (QCA). The results include input from seven general education…

This paper advances in the understanding of motivation in terms of flow in groups from a physiological perspective. We use wearable devices to monitor the heart rate variation during a set of sessions of face-to-face STEAM project-based learning. By using Action Research with mixed-methods design, we observed a set of 28 students in real-world…

This longitudinal study (three waves across a school year) investigated the links between children's motivations to respond without prejudice and their ethnic outgroup attitudes at the between-person level (means and changes over time) and the within-person level (time-specific fluctuations). Participants were 945 ethnic majority students…

We examine the association between parenting practices (discipline and support) and children's cognitive effort. Cognitive effort is hard to measure; hence, little is known about effort dispositions, and how parenting practices affect effort. We analyse data from 1,148 fifth-grade students from Berlin and Madrid (around 11 years of age). Cognitive…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine if and to what extent there is a correlation between paternal school involvement, and (school, cognitive/intellectual, and personal) involvement in their children's academic achievement of first through eighth-grade students in a private school. The theoretical foundation of…

This study investigated motivational and affective processes behind qualitatively different parental involvement practices in children's homework. Parent motivational beliefs (achievement goals, efficacy beliefs for their children, self-efficacy beliefs) were examined as predictors of parent autonomy support, control and interference, and parent…

There are barriers that interfere with parental involvement in their children's education in many schools in the U.S. However, additional barriers are often encountered by immigrant parents across our country. This investigation proposes practices that will better serve this population and reduce the barriers that affect their school engagement.…

We investigated how 5th-8th graders' self- and peer-identified withdrawal motivations predicted peer-reported peer relationships and aggression. Participants (N = 221; 47% male) provided self-reports and peer-nomination data (we analyzed 339 students' nominations). We hypothesized shyness, unsociability, and avoidance would predict low peer liking…

Music and math are related in that 1) they both rely on the basic understanding of numbers, proportions, intervals, measurements, and operations and 2) both require levels of abstract thinking and symbolic notation. Studies link music and math by examining, for example, how music may play a role in math performance. There are, however, few studies…